


Remembrance

by yumekuimono



Category: The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Based on a Tumblr Post, Bucky Barnes Needs a Hug, Drabble, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Tony Stark Needs a Hug, winteriron
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-13
Updated: 2016-09-13
Packaged: 2018-08-14 21:11:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,323
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8029093
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yumekuimono/pseuds/yumekuimono
Summary: AU where Bucky was found earlier and he and Tony ended up in a relationship. Bucky didn’t have all of his memories yet and doesn’t know about him killing Tony’s parents until the same moment Tony finds out.





	Remembrance

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by this artwork by hello-shellhead.

Tony wakes to the bed jerking and rolls over to find Bucky coming out of a nightmare. It’s not uncommon for either of their sleep to be disturbed by dreams, and Bucky’s memories are still coming back in bits and pieces. What had started out as the two of them avoiding sleep together had turned into a friendship and then into a relationship. Some days Tony can still hardly believe that he gets to keep this beautiful broken man. He reaches out a hand, runs it up and down Bucky’s flesh arm, offering comfort.

“Hey. You wanna talk about it?”

Bucky stares at him with wide eyes through the dark and his voice when he speaks is hoarse and cracked even in a whisper. “Tony…” He starts shaking again, and Tony squeezes his arm, but then freezes at his next words. “Howard and Maria… I…” He takes a couple of deep breaths, but all he can make come out of his mouth is, “I’m sorry.”

Tony blinks. Tries to make his brain work. Too many emotions are rising inside him, clawing out of his chest, and they all blur together into one overwhelming wave. “I think…” he says finally, “I need to be alone for a while.”

Bucky watches Tony slide out of bed, watches him walk away. He curls up in their bed and tries to make himself as small as possible until he can’t stand it anymore and goes down to his own floor. He hasn’t used it in a while, not since he moved in with Tony, but it’s always been available to him and now he wedges himself into the most defensible corner of the bedroom and cries. He’d spent a lot of time in this corner when he’d first come to the Tower. He didn’t think he’d ever need to go back to it, not now that he’s doing better, now that he has Tony.

It just goes to show that he can never escape, not really. Even now, HYDRA is fucking him over. Tony is the best thing in his life, the best thing that has happened to him since before the war, and HYDRA is going to take him away, like they took everything else. He has the blood of his boyfriend’s parents on his hands, and even if, somehow, Tony has managed to look past all the rest of it, there’s no way he can overlook this, let alone forgive him for it. He’d thought he had a chance to be happy, for once. He’d thought he’d have a chance to _keep_ being happy. It figures that as soon as he let his guard down, something like this would happen.

He must cry himself into exhaustion and back into sleep because the next thing he knows, Steve is there, sitting cross-legged on the floor, far enough away that Bucky doesn’t feel trapped. He wipes halfheartedly at the tears staining his face and Steve slides a box of tissues across the floor to him because Steve is good like that.

“Bucky,” he asks gently, “what’s wrong? JARVIS said you were down here, and nobody’s seen Tony all day. He won’t let anyone into the workshop, and even my code is blocked. Did something happen? Did you two fight?”

Mutely, Bucky shakes his head. Steve waits, and it says a lot about how far they’ve come that it feels like an offer of support rather than a pressure to talk. Eventually he says, “I remembered.” His voice is thick and he has to swallow and blow his nose a couple of times before he can continue. “HYDRA mission. I was— I killed—” He can’t look at Steve when he says it, buries his face in his knees so his voice is muffled when he says, “Howard Stark. And—and Maria.”

Steve is silent for a long time, and finally he works up the courage to peer up at him from behind his damp pajama pants. Steve’s brow is furrowed, but when he says, “Oh, Buck,” it’s not in a way that pities him, or is angry with him. “I’m so sorry. Did you tell Tony?”

Bucky nods, his voice still muffled behind his legs. “He wants to be alone.”

They sit in silence for a little longer before Steve asks, “Do you want a hug?”

Bucky can only shake his head. Steve had liked Howard. They’d been buddies back in the war. He doesn’t want to touch Steve when he has Howard’s death on his hands.

Steve says, “Alright,” and lets it go because, even if it had taken him a while to learn about mental health and PTSD and to stop expecting his best friend to be there exactly the same, he really is good like that. Instead he says, “You should eat something, at least.”

He makes Bucky a sandwich and leaves it in easy reach on the floor and tells him, “I’ll be upstairs. You need anything, just call. If the alarm goes off and you don’t feel up to it, don’t worry about it,” because that’s the kind of life they lead now.

He does eat the sandwich eventually, and moves out from his corner if only because his back and his butt start to hurt and there’s no sense staying there if he’s not waiting for something. That’s the thing with his memories. Either they come back or they don’t, and there’s no anticipating when he’ll remember something, so there’s no way to wait for it, no way to prepare. He just wishes he could have remembered that particular mission earlier. Before he’d fallen in love with Tony. Before he’d had a glimpse of everything he’d wanted, and that now…he doesn’t know if he still has. If he’ll ever have again. He goes to sleep again for lack of anything better to do and because he just wants to stop feeling.

When he wakes up, it’s to someone crawling into bed with him, pressing their forehead between his shoulder blades. Guiltily, he curls further in on himself, away from the line of heat at his back. He doesn’t really feel like talking, doesn’t know what there is he could say, but he forces himself to anyway because he doesn’t actually want to go back to the way he’d been before.

“Tony? What are you doing here?”

Now it’s Tony’s voice that’s muffled and upset, pressed against his back. “I missed my boyfriend.”

Bucky’s so busy fighting down the hope in his chest at those words that he almost doesn’t hear what Tony says next.

“And I’m trying to be better about these sorts of things, so…so I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have left you like that this morning. I just—I…yeah.” Tony’s breathing hitches, and his voice comes out choked and unsteady. “It’s not fair.”

Bucky turns over then, and it’s obvious Tony’s been crying. He reaches out to slide his fingers into the inventor’s hair, and Tony sniffles, holding on to him. “I’m so sorry, Tony.”

He’s crying for real again, but he shakes his head as best he can against the bed. “Don’t. Don’t. It’s not fair what they did to you, and it’s not fair that they killed my parents, and it’s not fair of them to make both of us suffer for it, and I just— I miss my mom. I miss her so much but I don’t want to lose you too.”

Bucky pulls him in closer then, wrapping his arms around the smaller man and letting him cry into his shoulder. “You won’t,” he promises into Tony’s hair. “You won’t. So long as you want me, I’m yours.”

Tony can’t find any words to respond to that, but he nods against Bucky’s neck and holds him tighter, hoping that it conveys everything he wants to say. They stay like that for a long time. Even after both of them are calm again, they stay.

**Author's Note:**

> Also check out [my Tumblr](%E2%80%9Dyumekuimono.tumblr.com%E2%80%9D).


End file.
